AP FACT CHECK: Trump claims rising suicides if US stays shut

Date:

President Donald Trump is making a baseless claim of surging suicides if the U.S. economy remains mostly shut due to the spread of the coronavirus.

There’s no evidence that suicides will rise dramatically, let alone surpass potential coronavirus deaths. Historically in a crisis, suicides tend to diminish as society pulls together in a common purpose.

Trump’s statement was one of several that showed him to be an outlier among top public officials as the coronavirus crisis deepens. A look at claims from Trump and his coronavirus task force and how they compare with the facts:

TRUMP: “I mean, we have never closed the country before, and we have had some pretty bad flus, and we have had some pretty bad viruses.” — Fox News virtual town hall Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He’s making a bad comparison.

The new coronavirus is not the same as the annual flu, because it’s a disease that hadn’t been seen before in humans. For that reason, human populations lack immunity to the virus. It can spread unchecked, except by measures such as social distancing. It isn’t clear what the death rate from COVID-19 ultimately will be. But Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health has suggested it might be around 1%, which is far less than some other viruses, but still 10 times greater than the average flu season.

TRUMP, on one reason why he wants to reopen the nation for business soon, even if it means more coronavirus infections: “You’re going to have suicides by the thousands.” — Fox News town hall.

TRUMP: “People get tremendous anxiety and depression, and you have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death. Probably and — I mean, definitely — would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.” — news briefing Monday.

THE FACTS: There’s no evidence that suicides will rise dramatically if nationwide social-distancing guidelines that have closed many businesses and are expected to trigger a spike in unemployment stay in place.

Read full article here.

Lauran Neergaard, Rocardo Alonzo-Zaldivar, Hope Yen – AP News – March 24, 2020.

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